


Bāsium

by noondaize



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Acceptance, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gentleness, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Moving On, Park Seonghwa-centric, Short & Sweet, Soft Kim Hongjoong, Soul Bond, Spirits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28040730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noondaize/pseuds/noondaize
Summary: Seonghwa traverses the cold alone, with only a suitcase and crumpled bills of money in his padded pocket.And nothing is right, or well, or whole— but this was a promise he made for the two of them.He would keep it.(Seonghwa isn't sure if he should be holding on or letting go. Hongjoong's always been better at making decisions for the two of them, including this one.)
Relationships: Choi San/Jung Wooyoung, Jeong Yunho/Song Mingi, Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 55





	Bāsium

**Author's Note:**

> This is just something short I wrote while going through an emotional episode :)
> 
> Happy Holidays, whether you celebrate or not. Stay warm.
> 
> -n.

November 16th.

God, Seonghwa was either going to catch a cold or catch sight of death itself out here.

The hotel staring back at him— large, hollowed, creeping and crawling upwards with the fires of Hell underneath its foundation— is intimidating at best. At worst, ominous and mocking. Everything is an eye, and every eye houses a thorn in its iris, and right now all are pointed at Seonghwa. 

The sharpest edges of passerby are only mildly comforting; cutting beneath the fabric with their judgment; at least they remind him belatedly that he can still feel. At least the numbness of frostbite hasn’t gotten to him yet. 

He opts for moving with his feet rather than his eyes, seeing as how staring at the hotel has made his nerves no less rampant and his body no less still. The only step he’s taken is backwards, almost one foot knocking the other off its axis, and the only thing he can really feel besides pins and needles is the tremor running over the electrical wire of his veins. Truthfully, his conscience is as there as it is elsewhere— among the gods in heaven, or better, the winded souls of limbo. Nothing really existed in black and white anymore. The world was only partial hues of gray.

Hongjoong never liked gray.

And as that thought crawls over his brain, rakes fingers through his done-up hair and kisses the bright red of his sodden cheeks— Seonghwa decides that it’s really,  _ really _ time to go in.

  
  


He can’t offer much to the bellhop besides a piece of candy, so he does.

In place of the scowl he’s expecting for his cheap tip, the bellhop only smiles wide and accepts the sugary sweet into gloved hands. A glance at his nametag: “Mingi”— what a name Seonghwa feels he remembers— is enough time away from the grinning teeth for him to meet them back with a passive nod. Mingi is gentle with his things as though he knows exactly what Seonghwa’s carrying on him.

Maybe he does. Maybe everyone knows. Maybe his skeleton is on the outside, for show and display. 

Maybe Seonghwa needs to order room service.

  
  


Clad in the robe provided— one of two, because this suite was designed for lovers, Seonghwa picks up the phone on his small bedside table. It’s after a moment of staring at the buttons of numbers that he realizes he has no idea who to call or what to order. A hazy thought that tells him to clarify both with his still-functioning consciousness has him ripping open the bedside table’s single drawer, revealing things awfully unpleasant to his eyes.

Condoms, a bottle of pocket-sized travel lube. And then the list of hotel numbers and service specifics. 

Seonghwa ignores the other bits and bobs for adult play in the drawer, shoving them aside and retrieving the pamphlet only to slam the drawer shut with a harsh force.

His arms are shaking straight down to his fingers, and everything hurts.

  
  


“We should be as intimate as we can while we’re there.” Hongjoong says it so nonchalantly, making Seonghwa choke on his steaming cocoa. It makes Hongjoong laugh to watch him flounder, and for that reason only, Seonghwa allows himself to flounder a little longer than necessary. 

False scandalized reaction aside, he questions Hongjoong’s words with an accusatory point of his index finger, twirling it slightly with the words out of habit.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit crass?”

Hongjoong shakes his head, flopping downwards onto their carpet from where he sits cross legged on the floor. He had such a bad habit of sitting on the floor, legs intertwined with themselves as they were tucked under the space of their coffee table. He often sat with his back facing the television so that he wouldn’t get distracted, but it did little to actually prevent anything when he was constantly slumped backwards or twisted into a small helix. Seonghwa enjoyed him from all angles as it was.

“Intimacy between us is a bonding and mindful activity,” Hongjoong sing-songs. His chest is puffed from where Seonghwa can see him, and only the tip of his thin adonis nose can really be seen poking beyond the cover of the coffee table, along with tufts of blueberry cream hair. 

“So I say we should do it a lot, because it always helps us to connect.” 

Seonghwa snorts, hearing the sound of Hongjoong’s eyes twinkling in a way that shouldn’t make sense for human eyes. Though, in delirium, Seonghwa might mistake him for a fairy from time to time. And perhaps that’s what Hongjoong was— crass words and shining eyes entirely.

“You just want naked cuddles as we watch the snow,” the elder hums, sipping from his cup as Hongjoong shoots up in one launch of his upper body. Seonghwa admires how much strength and tenacity such a small human could have.

Or fairy. It’s still a possibility. 

“That too,” Hongjoong puffs, cheeks alight and rounded with the air he’s blown into them as he pouts. It’s unintentionally endearing, and Seonghwa has no choice but to concede an unspoken defeat to not bother Hongjoong anymore about the matter.

In some awkward and overly-romantic sense of the thought, Hongjoong was right. There was nothing in the world that compared to sharing kisses, sharing pleasure, and sharing a bit of life’s essence in the small world they built out of sheets. It belonged solely to them.

And it made Seonghwa whole.

  
  


_“Mm, room service,”_ a bubbly voice rings itself over the line, too loud and too robust for the time of night it was. Seonghwa holds the phone away from his ear for only the slightest of seconds before pulling it right back like gravity, murmuring his order into the phone.

He orders enough for two without thinking, only beginning to berate the action once he’s put the phone down and hung up the line.

“You shouldn’t have gotten so much,” Hongjoong’s voice murmurs, and Seonghwa doesn’t question him as he comes out of the bathroom in the other matching robe.

“You know you can eat a lot when you’re excited,” Seonghwa snaps back, though the words are wrapped in reverence as opposed to agitation. He could never be mad at Hongjoong. Not really.

“It’s not my fault!” Hongjoong whines, launching himself forward and onto the bed. There’s a moment of cheekiness between them as Seonghwa gazes over his lithe form, with Hongjoong’s soft sky-colored locks covering chocolate eyes. He peeks up only the smallest bit from where the rest of his face is hidden into the cushions, and the gaze he meets Seonghwa’s with is one awfully demure. 

“It is almost always your fault,” Seonghwa says without thinking, before running a hand into Hongjoong’s hair. The younger meets the movement with a full-body shiver, though his smile comes easily only a few seconds later.

“You either ate so much you’d get sick,” Seonghwa whispers, laying himself down so he’s facing Hongjoong now. “Or you couldn’t eat at all— too excited to. I’ve never known someone to be so fickle when he’s excited.”

“But you love me,” Hongjoong whispers right back at him in retaliation; precious. “And you didn’t mind it.”

Seonghwa laughs, tired and occupied with the sight of his hands meeting Hongjoong’s skin. His cheek is soft and warm, bleeding pink that swirls with the otherwise porcelain finish, like airbrushed paint so gently patterned into the surface for the most beautiful of designs. “I never could.”

“Room service is almost here,” Hongjoong giggles. “And I better hide, considering they’ll think I’m a squatter if they catch me in here with you.”

Seonghwa doesn’t respond to that, letting Hongjoong rise and slip back into the bathroom. He sees the door shut and the light in it turns off, and waits patiently for knocks on the door.

He doesn’t have the energy to do much else. 

  
  


Three knocks come ten minutes later, which Seonghwa waits the entire duration of in silence. 

When he answers the door, a boy with fox-like eyes greets him, and belatedly Seonghwa wonders if all of the staff here have such distinctly animalistic eyes. Mingi’s resembled that of a tiger, though the shape of his smile is farther back in its incineration on Seonghwa’s lobe. 

“I’m San,” the fox-boy says happily, “I’ve brought your food, if you want me to help you set it up.”

Seonghwa feels taken aback for a second, unsuspecting of all the gentle hospitality he’s been shown thus far. He wonders if they know.

He’s wondered that too much since he came here.

“Um,” he weighs his options, before shrugging his shoulders. It wouldn’t hurt. “Sure. Go ahead.”

San tips his head in a joyful manner, pushing past Seonghwa with a cart full of food. Too much food, definitely, but if San sees the overall emptiness of the room and the lack of company besides Seonghwa— he doesn’t question it.

Seonghwa decides everyone at this hotel is much too nice. Maybe that’s why Hongjoong always wanted to come here. Maybe the hospitality of this place was something to be revered.

“Hey,” San says once he’s done placing the food out in a way that would be fit for Seonghwa to eat. “I’m um...I’m free, for the night. Me and Mingi— you met him, right? The bellhop?”

Seonghwa nods the affirmative, suddenly stunned even further by the beginnings of a proposition San is putting on the table next to his food.

“Me, and Mingi, and the boy who answered your call— Wooyoung, my um...my boyfriend— we might get together with some of the other staff for a late-night snack after our shifts. At 9. If you want to, you can come. No pressure though!”

Seonghwa only stares in silence, watching as San’s beautifully sharp eyes seem to round and droop. He shifts side to side, apprehensive, but still patient for Seonghwa’s answer.

“Why are you...inviting me? I’m just a patron of this hotel like everyone else.” Seonghwa maneuvers around San, sitting in the sole chair placed at the makeshift table. He looks at San with what must be heavy judgment, because San stares down at his shoes.

“We don’t often get…” San fidgets hard, like he’s scared of his own next words, and Seonghwa begs him to continue with a single hand.

“We don’t get singles in the lover’s suites, very often.” 

Seonghwa’s response is silence, before he picks up his fork and begins to eat with no continuous regard to San’s presence. The boy must feel his answer in the tension and the proceeding movements, because he dips his head again with sad eyes and bids Seonghwa a good night.

When the door closes, Seonghwa puts his fork down and digs his palms into his eyes.

  
  


“He seemed nice,” Hongjoong muses, sliding in front of Seonghwa’s vision with another chair in his grasp. He places it closer to Seonghwa so they’re nearly sitting side by side, to which Seonghwa adjusts his own so they’re nearly facing one another.

“Mm, as nice as an unprofessional employee can be, anyhow.” He bites harshly into his steak, regretting it as the heat seeps into the tender muscle of his cheek. Hongjoong only 'tsk's at him before handing him a glass half-full of wine.

“Cut the boy some slack, Hwa. I know what he did might have seemed insensitive, but you should look at it from his point of view. You look alone, and your face isn’t really giving any contradictory clues to say you’re not lonely. His heart was in the right place.”

Seonghwa sighs, placing his cutlery down with a clatter. He looks at Hongjoong dead in the eyes, and is met back with still-glittering orbs of enstatite. It’s almost unfair.

No, truthfully it is unfair.

“You’re always just one good deed away from thinking someone is a saint,” Seonghwa snaps at him, leaning back into his seat and resting his head in his hands. “And I don’t understand how you can be that way.”

Silence simmers between them like a festering infected wound, which only gets worse when Seonghwa dips back down to continue eating. He can feel his eyes begin to water and if anything, it’s just making everything all the more unbearable.

“You used to be like that too, you know.” 

Hongjoong’s words are a ghost, a phantom that wraps around Seonghwa’s ears and throat, gripping tight onto it. Seonghwa puts his fork down again in favor of his wine, deciding that he’d much rather keep his clutch on one destructive thing tonight than keep floundering for purchase on normalcy.

“Yeah Hongjoong, but maybe that’s because back then I was naïve. I was fucking stupid. You can’t blame me for not being that way anymore.”

_“Seonghwa,”_ Hongjoong practically begs him with his tone, asking Seonghwa to look at him by sheer energy alone. And Seonghwa does.

He’s met with Hongjoong’s eyes shining for an entirely different reason.

“You weren’t naïve, Hwa. You were happy. _We_ were happy.”

Seonghwa feels his tears rush down, staring at his lap and watching the snow white of his cotton-soft robe taint itself in droplets of gray as they fall from his face and hit the surface.

Seonghwa’s never liked gray.

“We were, Joong,” he sighs. His voice crackles on every word and it’s unbearable. Unbearable, unbearable, unbearable. But it’s real nonetheless. 

“And we can’t be happy anymore, because you just fucking left. _You left._ How am I supposed to believe that—“

He starts to really cry, then. Body shaking so much his wine nearly spills from its cup and he has to blindly set it down. The sobs ring loud and clear until they become silent, his ribs wracking with so much anguish that nothing can even come out of his throat. Not a single sound as he claws at his own neck and tears apart his done-up hair. Of all things, of all things— 

Hongjoong settles in front of him, on his knees as though he’s praying for forgiveness. He takes Seonghwa’s violent hands and holds them down between his own, grounding Seonghwa from ripping apart what little is left behind of him.

Seonghwa doesn’t think it will do anything, but Hongjoong’s touch is forever something to be savored, so he relents.

“I didn’t want to leave,” Hongjoong whispers, crying now too with Seonghwa as he leans forward. Their foreheads touch, and memories cascade on by, of all of Seonghwa’s favorite days spent just like this— touching their own skin, gliding across one another and feeling the other’s presence easily. That Seonghwa can reach out impulsively and feel Hongjoong there, curious as he stares back at Seonghwa and happily murmurs— 

“I’m still here.”

Seonghwa shakes his head, pressing closer with a harsh movement and sobbing openly. 

“You can’t— you can’t say that. Not anymore.” Seonghwa feels his head continue to shake even when he’s not trying to deny anything, Hongjoong pulling back and moving a hand up to caress his ruddy cheek. 

“I didn’t want to leave you, I promise you.” Hongjoong runs a thumb beneath Seonghwa’s eye, careful not to poke his eyelashes as he sweeps up the constant outpour of sorrow. “And I swear on everything good left in the world, that I’m forever sorry that I did. Please forgive me. Please know I never wanted to leave.”

_"I know,”_ Seonghwa sobs. “I know! And it makes it so much more— it hurts, Joong. It hurts so much. I didn’t want you to leave and you didn't want to— didn't want to go either. So why? Why us? Why _you?”_

Hongjoong smiles up at him— sad, tired, and resigned. 

“I wish I knew, love.”

Seonghwa wonders, deep down, if he truly wishes he knew why, too.

  
  


Hongjoong is careful as they maneuver to the bed. 

He holds Seonghwa close and tucks his body completely into the pocket Seonghwa gives him. There’s a moment of unspoken question between them, which Seonghwa answers when he scoots away just enough to undo the front tie of his robe. Hongjoong does the same. 

They’re both wearing nothing underneath, just as they’d always done when they wore robes around one another. When they’re completely bare they lean back in to one another, infinitely closer to try and feel each other’s skin. 

There’s no desire strong enough to rival the one Seonghwa feels now; a deeply seated yearning that overtakes him— the wish to melt into Hongjoong and become one sole mind and body.

But such a thing was impossible now.

“Do you remember…” Seonghwa starts to whisper, hyper aware of the way that Hongjoong’s head crooks upward in his neck to signal that he’s listening. “Do you remember when we first met?”

Hongjoong giggles only a little, more out of uncontrolled habit than genuine humor.

“How can I forget?”

_‘Because you can’t remember anything,’_ Seonghwa wants to say.

He doesn’t.

“You were so beautiful,” Hongjoong smiles into his skin. “Tall, and sharp around every edge. People were so scared of you because you wore all black and made it hard to even make eye contact.”

And it was true. Those days, when Seonghwa hated himself so much that nothing could rival the aura of disgust and anger that followed him. People conflated his signs of self deprecation and dissociation with antisocial behavior, and it wasn’t hard to think so. 

“Only you would find me beautiful,” Seonghwa laughs softly. “When I looked like that, only you would look at me.”

_‘We were all we needed,’_ goes unsaid.

“People will look at you, Hwa. You deserve to be looked at. Don’t be shy to meet their eyes.”

Seonghwa’s grip on Hongjoong tightens considerably.

“You’re the only one whose eyes I want on me. I don’t care about being looked at by anyone else.”

“Seonghwa…”

“Didn’t you say you’re still here?” Seonghwa’s voice comes out tight— angry and bitter and all wrong. He so desperately craves to be whole once more. To experience the sensation that once was a part of him as much as his pain is now. If he could, if only for a second he could, Seonghwa wants to delude himself and sink into the surrounding waters of an oasis in the middle of a desert. 

It doesn’t matter if it’s a mirage. 

“Just allow me this,” Seonghwa says after awhile of silence. Hongjoong growing smaller and smaller in his embrace to the point where Seonghwa feels like he's fading away; feels like Hongjoong is evaporating right there in his arms.

He can’t do this again. Doesn’t have the energy or the heart to. What little is left of him is already in shards scattered across a porcelain floor, and Seonghwa can’t be bothered to pick them up anymore. It’s been too many times of trying to collect them. It’s been too long trying to piece himself together.

“Just this, for now. Please.”

The response he gets back is a soft nuzzle, followed by an equally gentle whisper—

“Okay.”

  
  


“I was thinking...we could dance. Our song, our pace, just like always.” Hongjoong is quick to rise to his feet, light on them as he bounces and traipses around the hotel room to pull out a vinyl from Seonghwa’s luggage. Lucky for them, that this room came accompanied by a phonograph that wasn’t purely decorative.

Seonghwa watches his back as he places the record on the machine, careful in his movements despite the way his shoulder is now exposed. He’d haphazardly put his robe back on moments ago and encouraged Seonghwa to do the same, so here they are. Seonghwa with his robe in the middle of being tied, and Hongjoong’s dipping with the natural curves of his body. 

The song finally filters through after another moment of quiet attentiveness to the machine, and Hongjoong looks absolutely delighted when he turns around, offering a hand to Soenghwa like it’s the first time.

“There’s no one else I want to dance with,” Hongjoong says— careful, as he recites the memory. “And I’d really love it if you wanted to dance with me too. Just this once.”

Seonghwa grabs his hand, curling his own fingers around it.

It’s cold. Colder than it was that night.

“You’re silly,” he repeats the phantom of himself, “for thinking I’d ever want to dance with anyone but you.”

He rises to his feet to envelop Hongjoong in an embrace, their bodies beginning to twirl to the movement of the song. It’s just like it was at that dance during their high school years— sans the darkness of Seonghwa’s suit and his misplaced boots for dress shoes. Long gone is the cherry color of Hongjoong’s eyelids and the snow white of his hair as it’d been back then.

There are bigger differences between then and now, but Seonghwa is caught in this newfound wave of sudden denial, and he’d rather be lost at sea forever than deal with the pains of washing ashore.

“It’s been seven years,” Hongjoong muses. “Seven long years, hasn’t it?”

_‘No,’_ Seonghwa feels his mind say. _‘Nowhere near long enough. There was never enough time. I wanted more time.’_

He hums, faux amusement to the prospect of seven years passing by as though they were hundreds. Really, they felt like seconds.

Only the last one felt longer than a year.

“Seven,” Seonghwa whispers, as though it’ll confirm anything but what is true.

“Seven,” Hongjoong repeats.

Seonghwa wants to go back to that dance, when the years had yet to even be tallied. But he doesn’t know if he’d stop himself or end up here all over again. Trapped in an embrace that’s bound him to an ardent devotion and an equally powerful agony.

Seonghwa wonders if the version of himself that existed back then would tell him now— 

_‘This was never how it should have been.’_

  
  


The clock reads 8:30 long before Seonghwa can come to terms with it. Begrudgingly, the thought of San’s words play back in his mind again and again. There’s a certain haunting shadow that looms over him with those words, daunting as it begs him to give in to something he’s not quite sure he’s ready for.

For that, maybe no one is ever really ready.

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” Hongjoong presses into him as they sit on the edge of the bed, their legs dangling together just before the cold hard floor. Seonghwa keeps his own toes elevated just enough to not feel the rush of cold, but he wonders if it matters at all considering Hongjoong feels like a moving chill beside him. Their bodies continue to mingle on contacting skin; Seonghwa’s rising with bristling hairs as they feel the electric cold Hongjoong secretes through each and every pore.

“I don’t want to,” Seonghwa murmurs. 

Hongjoong must know exactly what he means.

“I think you should,” the younger sighs fondly. His words are curled around a smile and his eyes are filled with stars, but Seonghwa hates the thought that lingers— one of goodbyes, of having to exchange them so soon.

“It could be good for us both, Hwa.”

Seonghwa knows, deep down, that Hongjoong is right. He almost always is; always has been even since that day the previous year. Seonghwa hates his inability to argue, to say no, when it comes to Hongjoong’s words. Back when they were always together that wasn’t so much a problem as it was a saving grace. Because Hongjoong could steer them in the right direction and Seonghwa’s commitment could keep them on that same path.

Now that things are different, they’ve begun to diverge. They’ve begun to fight. Seonghwa’s begun to deny and reject him. But Hongjoong’s never stopped being right, Seonghwa’s just stopped listening.

And he thinks he must not be the one to blame. Anyone in his place would surely do the same. 

“Aren’t you scared?” Seonghwa asks instead, sliding himself further up the bed to lie back down. All the time that’s passed and yet, not much has really transpired that isn’t Seonghwa boring holes into one part of Hongjoong or another.

Is this truly what denial feels like?

“I’m terrified, just as much as you are,” Hongjoong shrugs. “But fear never really kept us from doing anything before, so why should it stop us now?”

“Because,” Seonghwa whispers to him, watching Hongjoong slide up the bed so that they can lie face to face. “After this, there won’t be anymore ‘us’.”

Hongjoong giggles, smile still warm as the sun despite how cold his touch is when he caresses Seonghwa’s cheek. 

“There will always be an ‘us’ as long as we love each other. I’ve never stopped. I’ll never stop.” Hongjoong’s words come out rough and passionate, his lips moving forward to ghost over Seonghwa’s own. Something about the movement should be erotic— so many things about this special night and this room made for lover’s should be, too— but Seonghwa instead feels comforted by the way their lips rubs up against one another and part with a chaste kiss. He enjoys just feeling Hongjoong in his entirety, however little it is.

“You’ll love me, even with a heart that’s no longer beating?”

And _ah,_ Seonghwa feels the exact moment those words settle into his mouth and how they taste on his tongue. He watches Hongjoong pull away, and spots the exact moment that his voice settles between their bones.

Seonghwa wants to know what acceptance feels like, too.

“I’ve loved you every single day,” Hongjoong laughs. His eyes are watery. Seonghwa wonders what the point is of crying now, yet he feels his own do the same. “I have loved you even when you called out for me in the middle of the night and I couldn’t go to you. I will love you even when they bury you next to me.”

Seonghwa’s eyes begin to leak, the pain suddenly overflowing and gushing out in rivers. The flow of blood between his veins and the cascading gems along his eyes remind him— he’s human, he’s alive. 

He’s afraid, but he’s not a coward.

“I love you too,” he whispers, voice cracking as much as it can around such a short phrase. “I miss you so much.”

Hongjoong laughs full of sorrow, yet there’s a weightless light to it that draws Seonghwa in and makes him smile in turn. 

“Don’t miss me,” Hongjoong murmurs. He leans in and presses a kiss to one of Seonghwa’s ruddy cheeks that’s become doused in tears. “I’m always right here.”

And Seonghwa sees it now— the very first tendrils of acceptance that wrap around him and show him understanding. That when Hongjoong says _‘I’m still here’_ it’s not a delusion, it’s simply a phrase that’s taken on a new meaning no less true. Hongjoong is with him, always. 

Love is something that will last much longer than either of them ever will.

“Moving on is so frightening,” Seonghwa confesses. His words are so small and delicate, carried by the wind like dried petals that are being crushed by the breeze. “I don’t want to let you go.”

“You’re not,” he’s reassured. “You’re not leaving me behind. You carry me with you.”

“You love me, still.”

Seonghwa nods to the words, certain in the way his heart curls with delight at the acknowledgment. As long as Hongjoong knows— as long as Seonghwa himself knows— that the love is still there, then he can walk forward.

He can live again, for however long. Alone but never lonely. 

“Go to them,” Hongjoong encourages him. His hands have found Seonghwa’s in the space between them and his grip is suddenly full of all the world’s burning warmth. Like a star burning its brightest just before it disappears, everything that Hongjoong is holds onto Seonghwa tight. “Go to them and be happy.”

Seonghwa feels himself cry in freedom, body enveloped in this soft embrace of encouragement. Running from the truth for so long had made him so tired, and he hadn’t noticed the way his bones ache with exhaustion until now. His existence which asks for rest— Hongjoong’s, which stares back at him, telling him to lie down and feel no fear for what the world will look like when he awakens. 

“When it’s all over,” Seonghwa smiles, “I will tell you every story, and every moment of happiness I have had. I will come back to you.”

“Yes,” Hongjoong grins, “when it’s over, we’ll talk all about it. We’ll have all the time in the world to.”

They kiss just once, a chaste peck of their lips that’s full of an electric shock coursing through their veins. For a second, life is vivid and complete— whole, shining, and prismatic with every moment of happiness and sadness that they’ve shared. Intimacy that goes deeper than skin, bone, or soul. A connection between the two of them that acts not as a goodbye, but a reminder that later will come soon enough.

Seonghwa pulls away, staring into the silence of the room with nothing greeting him back but the cold air.

And Hongjoong lives vibrantly beneath the skin of his chest, right in the center of his beating heart. Right where he’ll live until the day Seonghwa’s heart follows his, and beats no more.

“Glad to see you could make it!” San greets with a chirp, he’s awfully pleased at the sight of Seonghwa and he drags him over to the break room.

Seonghwa’s greeted by a group of five other men— excluding San who’s standing next to him. Mingi waves hello rather kindly, and Seonghwa waves back with just as much politeness.

“Come! Have a seat,” San pushes him by the shoulder with a tender touch, allowing him to settle between a tall man with bright ocean blue hair and a princely blonde. They both exchange their hellos— as Yunho and Yeosang respectively— and are quick to include him in conversation. Seonghwa feels at home among their exuberance, the way the other two named Jongho and Wooyoung bicker excitedly and the group laughs together as one.

_‘You would like them,’_ he feels himself whisper within his mind. Because Hongjoong would.

He doesn’t feel the weight of an absence in place of the silence that greets his mind, instead smiling as he rubs a hand above his chest. _‘I will make many memories with them for you.’_

“So what brings you to the biggest suite in the hotel, Seonghwa?” Wooyoung asks it with no shame, ignoring the jab to his ribs that Jongho gives him. It’s amusing, at the very least.

“I’m celebrating my anniversary,” he says back easily. He finds his lips pulled upwards in a smile, and revels in this new feeling of it being genuine. 

“I didn’t know,” San gapes with widened eyes at him, “I’m so sorry if I—” 

“No, you were right.” Seonghwa reaches a hand to pat at San’s shoulder, comforting him with his touch. Hongjoong had been right, San was clearly a kind person. “I’m celebrating my anniversary without the presence of my husband this year, but I’m not exactly lonely.”

“Oh,” Yunho says as though he’s saddened to hear it. “I’m sorry. I hope the two of you will reunite soon.”

Seonghwa laughs, telling the group to lift their heads and not look so sour. “I miss him nearly every day, but he’s always with me in my heart.”

The other's faces seem to shift in realization.

“That’s admirable.” Mingi’s comment comes softly, his smile warm and his cheeks shaded pink. “I hope that my love will be like that too.”

He and Yunho share a look that Seonghwa finds unmistakable, reminiscent of eyes catching one another across the school gym during a stuffy dance.

He gives the redhead a grin.

“I think there’s more love like that in the world than you think.”

And Seonghwa says it because it’s true. Because there are billions of people across the surface of emerald and sapphire, and somehow individuals manage to find one another. Because there are so many love stories out there, and in their own ways each one is prosperous and incomparable. 

“Trust me,” he tells no one in particular, “love is stronger than any of us know.”

They hum in agreement, and carry on their merry way with jokes of laughter and songs of happiness. And Seonghwa sleeps soundly with their numbers in his pockets, and the burning of a new memory into his brain as it’s placed right beside the trinkets covered in Hongjoong. 

A new chapter begins for him just like that. Slowly, a day at a time, just as he’d discovered and fell into love with tentative excitement— Seonghwa learns acceptance. 

“They sound lovely,” Hongjoong comments with a grin. “I’m excited to meet them all.”

“You will soon enough, they’re all more than likely scattered about. I was the last to go of them, you know.”

Hongjoong holds the crown of Seonghwa’s head to his chest, stroking the locks of his hair and placating him. 

“That probably wasn’t easy for you, was it?”

Seonghwa shakes his head, looking upwards with his chin delicately digging into the skin of Hongjoong’s pectorals. “Surprisingly, it wasn’t as frightening as it could have been. They seemed happy their entire lives. They lived...full. _Whole.”_

“Do you think they’ll like me?” Hongjoong asks him honestly, eyes sparkling.

He shines now, eternally, like a glowing star.

“I think it’s hard not to.”

Hongjoong gives him a cheeky grin, his fingers coming to tussle the hair between them in bashfulness. 

“Do you suppose this next lifetime will be any better than last?”

Seonghwa contemplates the words with reverence, cut short by the sound of six men hollering their way through the door. They’re quick to give Seonghwa his pat on the back or embraces of warmth before excitedly shouting greetings at Hongjoong. The world around him is full of a new form of excitement, different from love or acceptance. Different from a rebirth, even as their souls meet in this middle room before they cross over.

“I think,” he says to Hongjoong in a whisper as he stands, watching the others converge and smile their way through their interactions. “That this life will be better than any one we’ve had before.”

And the smile that Hongjoong gives him makes everything worth it. Like the feeling of a kiss being settled onto all his wounds, closing them up one by one as they link their hands together. They walk forward into the crowd of overexcited boys, suddenly young again and feeling as light as air and as bright as the sun. Eight singing bodies of all the galaxy’s stars. 

There’s a moment in between where his future flashes before his eyes, full of every single one of these men smiling and crying and running with him. Full of memories to be made and acceptances to be felt. And Hongjoong is there through it all, even until old age, where their hearts will beat together as one.

April 3rd. 

Seonghwa’s new life begins with the feeling of warmth. 

**Author's Note:**

> TWT: sanniedaize
> 
> For those wondering, 'bāsium' is the latin word for 'kiss' (usually of the hand). I like the idea that kisses can represent a multitude of things; 'hello', 'goodbye', 'I missed you', etc. I thought it fit really well with the way the tones change in this fic :)
> 
> Comments and kudos aren't necessitated, but they really help me out with my writing and make my day better. If you want to leave one, then I'd really appreciate it!
> 
> -n.


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